A week was spent in taking off the horses, for whom a rude shelter was built from the cabin timbers of the ark. Some of the cargo was also unloaded. For another week part of the crew were busy in making harness from lines and hawsers, which they had on board for moorings and “cordelling,” while others cut down tall, high feathering pines to be used as rollers under the ark. The live-oak was also cut down and a way cleared for the re-launching.
They christened the hammock “Ararat.”
When they were ready to get the ark down into the swamp, the crews of two corn-laden barges from St. Louis came across to render assistance, bringing with them hawsers and pulley-blocks.
The great broadhorn was finally floated on the submerged savannah, and it was comparatively easy for the men to pole back to the river gap, where the hardest of their task yet awaited the arksmen. Here the clumsily wrought harness came into play again. Claiborne and Lincoln had also contrived hames, roughly hewn out of green willow wood.
A strong post was set in the river bank, on the south side of the gap. A section off the trunk of a large hollow tree was fitted upon the post so as to revolve on it, for hawsers to reeve round. Their supply of line running short, three extra hawsers were bought from passing boats, and a double pulley-block constructed from seasoned plank and two iron bolts.
With such rude tackle, contrived wholly by the ingenuity of the pioneers, twelve of the horses were at length hitched to a long hawser, reeved through the pulley-block and running round the post, and the ark was hauled foot by foot up into the river.
The St. Louis corn barges had gone on, but other barges had been lying-by to render such assistance as was in their power, and they were on the point of giving a cheer for the ark when they noticed that all the labor spent upon her had been in vain.
The ark was sinking.